Mini Maker Faire Celebrates Creativity and Woolen Gnomes

A few years ago Gimili Glavin moved back to the Vineyard after many years of living in New York city and working as a set designer. She had a small child, so that kept her busy, but still, the long winters in Aquinnah were wide open and gray. She needed to find an outlet. The answer, jellyfish lamps.

Ms. Glavin had been wandering the up-Island beaches, and was drawn to the twisted root-like structures of the plants near Moshup Trail and the Gay Head Cliffs. She began scavenging the beaches until she found a few prize specimens rolling along the sand like tumbleweeds. She took them home, turned them upside down so they stood upright, with their roots reaching down like long tentacles. Then she drilled canals or holes down through the structures, inserted electrical cords and put domed lamp shades on top.

Jellyfish lamps anyone? Created by Gimili Glavin.
— Bill Eville

“I’m self taught,” Ms. Glavin said on Saturday at the Agricultural Hall in West Tisbury at the first ever Mini Maker Faire on Martha’s Vineyard. “There were a lot of long conversations at Ace Hardware.”

Ms. Glavin’s first finished piece took two years to make, but she’s sped up production and on Saturday there were about five or six jellyfish lamps on display. Across from her station, Karla Jacobs of Howling Wool sat with a large group of small woolen gnomes. An eight-year-old girl played with the creatures and the wool used to make the gnomes, while listening intently to Ms. Jacobs explain the differences between Icelandic wool (very rough) and merino wool (very soft).

“I want one,” the girl said pointing to a gnome and turning to her father.

Ms. Jacobs explained that nothing was for sale at this event, it was just for display.

For those out of the loop, Maker Faires are a global phenomenon, started in 2006 in San Francisco by Maker Media which publishes Make Magazine. Each faire is as diverse as the number of people presenting their work. The unifying principle is the creative mind. Hobbyists of all types and ages reveal in the light of day what they do out of the public eye, for fun, for education or to get through the long winter months on the Island. There are only so many potlucks one can attend, after all.

The event was organized by the Martha’s Vineyard Library Association. Last year at a group meeting of the Island librarians, Allyson Malik of the Oak Bluffs Library brought up the idea of bringing a Maker Faire to the Island. She passed the baton to Jennifer Rapuano at the Vineyard Haven Library, who then checked out the scene at a Cape Cod faire and then traveled to the major leagues to witness a huge one in Brooklyn.

Legos — the bedrock of all creative juices.
— Graham Smith

“There are so many people making cool things here,” Ms. Rapuano said on Saturday. “This gives them a platform to share it with the rest of the Island.”

Ms. Rapuano said the planning and organizing took about six months. On Saturday there were approximately 35 presenters, and over the course of the day hundreds of visitors to the fair.

“We didn’t know what to expect, this being the first one,” Ms. Rapuano said. “But it’s been a great success.”

Derek Fairchild-Coppoletti knows his way around a computer. A Stanford Business School graduate with two young children who love Minecraft and other computer games, he decided last summer to offer a week-long computer programing camp (all proceeds went to Island schools’ technology programs), so kids could move past simply pushing buttons and playing games and peer into the mind of the computer itself. He continued giving classes during the school year, and the group created their own computer game called School House Chop, using Leap Motion virtual reality technology. On Saturday Mr. Fairchild-Coppoletti and his entourage of preteens were on hand to discuss the fruits of their labors.

“The game is like Fruit Ninja,” said Tate Fairchild-Coppoletti, age 9, “but instead of chopping fruit, you chop school supplies.”

Woolen gnomes by Karla Jacobs of Howling Wool.
— Bill Eville

Tate put his hands out, hovering over the keyboard like a pianist about to begin a concert. On the screen a set of long sharp fingers appeared, something Freddy Krueger would approve of, and then Tate began slicing and dicing notebooks, pencils, textbooks. The goal was to pick up the pieces before they fell to the ground. Education has never been so cutting edge.

On the other side of the hall, and age spectrum, Sandy Pratt and Anna Marie D’Addarie, were saving the world, one T-shirt tote bag at a time. At their station were two sewing machines and many, many piles of old T-shirts.

“T-shirts that have been marginalized,” Ms. D’Addarie said, wanting everyone to know that no pristine T-shirts were harmed in the process. The women were from the Chicken Alley Thrift Shop in Vineyard Haven, which relies on donated goods which they sell at the thrift shop to raise money for Martha’s Vineyard Community Services. Turning T-shirts into tote bags is part of a new initiative called Hatched, where products that don’t sell are “up-cycled” in order to give them new life.

“It’s a soft launching today,” Ms. D’Addarie said, adding that “T-shirt tote bags have long been a hobby of mine.”

David Stanwood (red cap), a piano scientist, watches John Alaimo play his creation.
— Graham Smith

Leaving the Agricultural Hall on Saturday was a little like leaving a party too soon. Giant Sword maker Michael Craughwell was still giving video demonstrations and talking about the difficulties of shipping a custom made sword weighing close to 1,000 pounds to a customer in England. Tim Laursen’s huge mechanical blue elephant wailed away on the drums while Mr. Laursen played guitar, the sound echoing on two custom-made spinning, glowing amplifiers. And David Stanwood sat at his piano, not just an ordinary piano, of course, but one he had added an inventor’s touch so the “leverage ratio” could be altered and in effect one piano could assume the role of numerous pianos by just a push of a button.

The only quiet participants at the event were perhaps the woolen gnomes, but if watched closely even their open-mouthed stares seemed to echo what everyone else kept saying all day long — Wow.

Comments (2)

Thanks, Bill, for the great article. "Wow" is right - what amazing creativity and capacity we have in our community!
We appreciated the mention of our activities (the students have been _amazing_ and have worked SO hard!). I wanted to provide information if anyone would like to know more or provide suggestions about how we can better serve the island with enabling technologies and applied education.
More information about the students' video game / virtual reality and associated activities can be found at www.chaoticcoders.org. Students have worked with professional coding environments like the Unity engine / C++, Python (with code injected into Minecraft as a 3D "canvas"), as well as with Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and Stencyl.
Separately, HereLab is a non-profit project building a free to use, island- and waterways-wide network for Internet of Things sensors, actuators, and applications to enable people and organizations to benefit from open data in our community. We've worked in the West Tisbury School teaching students to solve problems in their building like freezing pipes and overheating server rooms by helping them make and program remote, radio-enabled temperature sensors. At MV Regional High School, we've worked with teachers Jason Neago (physical sciences) and Chris Connors (computer science) to help students design and execute experiments to serve building managers and administrators with data about their infrastructure. Beyond youth education, we hope to build technical capacity on MV for all ages, and are currently working with farmers / in aquaculture, on water quality / environmental conservation, municipal issues, and many other applications. More information can be found at www.herelab.io
We'd appreciate any suggestions about how we can better serve the community, and increase awareness about the transformational power of these technologies and approaches. Thanks again. Best, Derek Fairchild-Coppoletti